This comes courtesy of WeAreSC.com, and it’s instructive: An account of Pat Haden’s Tuesday night chat with the Trojan Club of San Gabriel Valley.

The news: By a vote of 7-5, the athletic directors forwarded a proposal to the CEOs that places Cal and Stanford in the North with the Oregon and Washington schools.

Best I can tell, this is the first public confirmation of the alignment — Cal and Stanford in the North — that many expect to ultimately win the day.

But the 7-5 vote also indicates that the outcome is far from certain.

Here are Haden’s comments, taken from WeAreSC.com’s account of his chat. (For the full story, which includes some nice zingers by Haden, go here.)

“We’re going for the money, sadly, that’s what it is. We need a conference title game.

“I went to my first athletic directors meeting last week and we discussed expansion. We made a recommendation that passed 7 to 5 and the presidents of the schools will vote on it later this month.

” There’s no guarantee it will pass, it was only a 7 to 5 vote, certainly not unanimous. The alignment that got 7 votes was one that puts USC/UCLA, the Arizona schools and Col/Utah in the same division.

“I told them my alumni will kill me if we don’t play the Northern California schools and have the weekender every year.

“I proposed a 5-2-2 model that has us playing the five schools (UCLA, AZ schools and Co/Ut) every year and then have the Northern California schools as part of our regular 2 and then rotate the other two. We need to play Stanford and Cal.”